Warning or camouflage? Pigments can send signals, but also protect against sunlight or other dangers. The small, color-giving particles are hardly soluble in water or other application media: pigments are mainly added to paints and coatings, plastics and construction materials.
In contrast, dyes, being soluble, are used mainly to color liquids, e.g., for textiles. Ceresana has analyzed the world market for pigments for the seventh time. Worldwide demand for pigments is predicted to rise to about 13.4 million tonnes per year in 2030. The researchers expect the highest growth in the regions Asia Pacific and Africa.
An In-depth Market Overview of Pigments
By far the most important sales market for the pigments industry is the application area paints and coatings with current demand amounting to around 4.69 million tonnes per year. The area plastics comes in second place, followed by construction, printing inks, and paper. The application area interior and exterior paints in the construction industry alone accounts for around 2.3 million tonnes of pigments, followed by coatings for industrial products, an area in which pigments can be used in numerous ways: as protection from environmental influences, as decoration, but also as electrical insulation for electrical products, or as an oxygen barrier for food packaging. The demand for pigments in the different areas of application show large regional differences. Ceresana takes these differences into account by analyzing the sales markets for paints and coatings, plastics, and printing inks along with their respective submarkets in detail.
Pigments Color Plastics and Printing Inks
The largest application in the segment plastics is the area rigid and flexible packaging, with a yearly demand of around 1.3 million tonnes of pigments. Additionally, pigments are used for numerous industrial plastics products such as automotive components, as well as areas like electrical engineering and electronics, mechanical engineering, medical technology, and the agricultural industry. In the printing inks market, the largest application area is offset printing with a share of 49%. In second place comes flexo printing, a process used mainly for flexible packaging, pulp and nonwovens, labels as well as corrugated board, cardboard, and films.
Titanium Dioxide and Iron Oxide are the Most Important Pigment Types
The best-selling pigment types are inorganic pigments, especially metallic salts. The white pigment titanium dioxide (TiO2), which is mainly used for paints and coatings, makes up for 60% of the global demand for pigments. Iron oxide pigments come in second place as the most used inorganic colored pigment. It’s followed by Carbon Black, which can be used as a black pigment and has many other uses, e.g., as a filler in car tires and other rubber applications. This coloring carbon (known as lamp black) is mainly used in printing inks varnishes and other inks, but can also function as UV-protection for plastics. Organic pigments like azo pigments or polycyclic pigments are based on carbon. In the past, they were obtained from plant or animal materials. Currently, they constitute only a small share of the worldwide pigment market: All organic pigments together amount to a market volume of less than 1 million tonnes.
Industrial analysis of Pigment Manufacturers
Chapter 1 offers a presentation and analysis of the global pigment market, including forecasts until 2030: For each world region, the development of revenues, demand and production are given.
The respective regional demands are listed separately for the different pigment types:
Titanium dioxide (TiO2)
Carbon black
Iron oxide
Other inorganic pigments
Organic pigments
Additionally, the different application areas of pigments are examined, split into the following categories:
Paints and Coatings split into the submarkets:
Construction
Automotive coatings
Industry
Other paints and coatings
Plastics split into:
Packaging
Construction
Industry
Other plastic applications
Paper
Construction Materials
Printing Inks split into:
Offset printing
Flexo
Other printing processes
Other applications
In Chapter 2, 31 countries will be analyzed in detail:
Demand
Export
Import
Production
Revenues
The market data concerning the demand volume of each country are split up according to the different pigment types as well as the application areas.
Chapter 3 offers useful company profiles of the most important pigment manufacturers, structured according to contact data, revenues, profits, product palette, production sites, and a brief company profile. Profiles are provided, for example, for following manufacturers: Altana AG, DIC Corporation, Heubach GmbH, Lanxess AG, Merck KGaA, Pidilite Industries Limited, Rio Tinto Group, Umicore SA, and Venator Materials Plc.
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